Sacred to the memory of Agnes, dearly beloved wife of William Goldie, died 13th December 1959; William, their elder son, died on active service 22nd October 1942 aged 19; the above William Goldie died 2nd September 1974
CWGC: Air Mechanic 2nd Class William Hughes Goldie, Service No. FX98737; Royal Navy, H.M.S. Daedalus; d. 22 Oct. 1942, a. 19. W 113
William Hughes Goldie was born in Edinburgh on 16 September 1923, the son of William Goldie, a tinsmith, and his wife Agnes Hughes, who had married at Old St Paul’s Episcopal Church in December 1922. William Goldie had been a member of the 3rd Lowland Field Ambulance, a Territorial Force unit of the Royal Army Medical Corps, in World War One, serving in Gallipoli, Egypt and France between 1915 and 1919, and being awarded the 15 Star, British Victory and War medals.
William Hughes Goldie was serving in H.M.S. Daedalus as an Air Mechanic 2nd Class when he died at the Military Hospital at Shenley, Hertfordshire, of “Peripheral Circulatory failure” and “Fulminating Streptococcal Septicaemia” on 22 October 1942, aged barely 19.
H.M.S. Daedalus was a Royal Naval Air Station at Lee-on-Solent, near Portsmouth. Established as a seaplane base in 1917 it had become a training establishment and administrative centre of the Fleet Air Arm and one of its principal shore airfields during the inter-war years. In World War Two Daedalus was the base for a number of naval air squadrons.